Miller is Serious About Pink

Throughout the month of October, Meredith Miller and her teammate Teal Stetson-Lee have been sporting a pink California Giant/Specialized kit. The color has meaning.

Back in the spring, team director Anthony Gallino asked Miller if she wanted to wear pink for the Breast Cancer Awareness Month. “It’s for a good cause and I like pink so I would love to support it.” she replied. “I was definitely behind it.”

The kits are part of CalGiantʼs Think “Pink” campaign. The company has committed to a donation of $10,000 to the National Breast Cancer Foundation and money raised from the sale of California Giant berries in October will contribute to that donation.

"Pretty In Pink", Meredith Miller (CalGiant) on her way to winning Great Brewers Gran Prix of Gloucester

“It’s been very cool wearing pink and definitely gotten a lot of positive feedback from people, just thanking me from raising awareness and for what I’m doing to give back to such a good cause. I’ve had people ask me where they can get the pink jerseys or skinsuits.” Miller explained.

“Like in Providence I had a father out there with his two little girls, watching, it was great they were in this one section, they were screaming, screaming for me every time I came by. And then afterwards, he sent me a twitter message saying now all my girls want is a pink jersey.” she laughed.

Miller was thinking what else she could do, and then like many women, “a small scare” made it even more personal. “It’s one thing to wear pink and to show people that I am out there supporting the cause but then it was another to really do something and contribute myself.” It turned out to be nothing but Miller was energized.

So she put together a separate fundraising effort with a local flavor: the “Pretty in Pink” fundraiser to benefit Hope Lives!, The Lydia Dody Breast Cancer Foundation. Hope Lives! is a Ft Collins-based non-profit breast cancer foundation that provides complimentary care and lifestyle support to breast cancer patients throughout their breast cancer treatment.

“For me to pick HopeLives, a local foundation, made it a lot more personal too in a sense, I really wanted to feel that I was making a difference.” Miller said.

Miller teamed up with two local businesses, Backcountry Provisions and Full Cycle, to host an auction on October 20th at Backcountry Provisions. One hundred percent of the funds raised from this event will go to Hope Lives!

“We’ve asked a lot of different companies, local, national and international to donate items for the auction and we’ve got a huge response which has been really cool. It went from kind of a small, little local thing ‘oh let’s have a few people to have an auction to raise some money for HopeLives!’ to now a pretty big event.”

The response has been great. “I’m thinking that we’re going to end up having enough product come in that we’ll probably split it between the actual event and then also some items going online.” Stay tuned for information on separate online auction/raffle.

Then, to close out the month she will be a “Celebrity Spin Fundraiser” at Become Fit, a yoga and spinning studio, in Ft Collins on October 28. Think you can keep up with Miller? She’s ready to throw it down and it’s all for a good cause.

This year only the women on the team, Miller and Stetson-Lee are sporting pink while the men are still in the traditional red CalGiant kit. So why not the men in pink too?

“I think it’s one of those things if you had just given them pink they would have been ‘whoa what? And then when they found out they weren’t wearing pink, of course then they said we want to wear pink too.” Miller laughed. “I think next year, if we do this again and I would like to do this again, I think the whole team should wear pink because it really would make a much broader impact. It would make a lot more noise.”

Miller will not only be wearing pink in four more races this month but will also have a pink Specialized bike too. Pink head-to-toe with a message. Look for Miller and her teammate Stetson-Lee at the Greenware US Gran Prix of Cyclocross in Louisville KY this weekend, and at the Colorado Cross Classic and Boulder Cup next weekend in Colorado.